Last day

I still remember about two weeks of little sleep and a lot of worry. Luke, at 15-years-old, was struggling and David and I did not know what we could do. We hung on. We took shifts of staying awake all night and reassuring Luke that he would be OK, we would be OK, and that life was good. We feared for Luke's safety, and I feared for my mental wellbeing.

As a daughter of a mother who struggled with severe mental illness I knew where sleepless nights could lead, and I was scared. I was also so very tired, mentally and physically.

About 3 a.m. one winter morning, after days and nights of no sleep and so much worry, I went online. I had no thought of where the next few clicks would take me. It took me to an advertisement for a labradoodle, a puppy.

I remember staring at the screen and revelling at how much the dog in the picture looked like my favourite dog from when I was child. Her eyes drew me to her and I knew she was mine.

I often say Rootbeer is Luke's, heart and soul, but she is mine, mind and body.

As Luke stole 10 minutes of sleep from his rage, and Dave snuck a few hours before he resumed the complicated calculations of a difficult job, I thought of next steps. I confess. I wasn't thinking straight.

With at least one of my children asthmatic and already owning a cat, getting a dog was a foolish thought, an expensive thought, an impossible thought.

I thought about her though. I didn't even know her and I knew she would change our life, my life. I just knew she was ours. It made absolutely no sense but I knew.

I ambushed David in the hallway as he began another long day. I knew his answer. We had discussed a dog before. The answer was always 'no'.

This time David said yes.

Go back to the beginning of this blog to learn about the journey to the country in a snowstorm to pick up a puppy who became a late addition to our family.

That was almost 11 years ago.

Today, at 5 p.m., a gentle veterinarian will arrive and he'll give Rootbeer a needle and she'll go to sleep in our arms.

It's impossible to think about tomorrow, today.

All I know is that because of Rootbeer, Luke recovered from that deep spiral into the abyss of a dark depression that threatened to hold him and us hostage indefinitely.

She is one of the best decisions I've ever made and she's proof that family is a feeling, and that feeling is love.

One year after last post

Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a bannana

You'd think that with more than a year's worth of puppy stories stored up, my fingers would be flying over the keyboard anxious to describe the bits and bytes of a dog's life in an all too-human house, but they're not. Instead, they stumble and stretch to find the letters that will make the words that will tell the story of our last year together.

The hightlights:

• A resignation
• A manic climb into psychological distress
• A hospital stay
• A new job

Of course, Root Beer wasn't the protaganist in any of these dramas. Instead, they're stories from the human side of the family. Mental illness, a family favourite, joined us last summer to entertain us with sleepless nights, unwarranted mood swings and unexpected anger.

Root Beer was an anchor of calm while we road on the waves of severe emotional distress. She comforted each family member as we reacted or acted depending on who was experiencing what. I took her for long walks just to get out of the house and Luke spent many frantic minutes patting her as he struggled to find calm.

Time passed. The walks grew shorter and the stillness that happens after a storm passes lasted longer,

I accepted a new job. It's tough but I'm enjoying the learning.

School started and routine rentered our home.

Now, Root Beer looks to the front door with big brown eyes waiting for someone or something new to come in, but I'm okay with waiting because my normal is now routine.

Moist and mushy - and scary too

Lessons learned from six feet of snow: Don't let the dog poop in the pool. Some time around November it became too cold to go outside with Root Beer. Instead of racing behind her like we were accustomed to in the summer months (and picking up the poop right away), we let her run to the bushes and hide her business.
And then the snow fell. When it was just a fresh dusting, we spent time picking poop up. However, in Winnipeg, in winter, the snow doesn't dust - it crushes, it hurls and it falls. There isn't any 'picking up' because there isn't any stopping. When the snow does stop and you do step outside, your innards freeze.
If you're a Manitoban, you know better then to go outside in January. You keep as much heat inside as possible. In February, it came to our attention that Root Beer liked to find ground that wasn't six-feet deep to drop her steaming bundles or aromatic waste. As many know, a swimming pool in the backyard, in winter, offers a natural depression. The snow in the swimming pool isn't as deep as its neighbouring snowflakes in the backyard.
For a dog who doesn't like to dig, a pool in the winter is a nice place to poo. We picked a lot of low-lying poo from the easy to use backyard 'depression'.
In February we picked up three black bags of dog crap. We thought we were done. Every day we picked up poop, every day we picked up more. It was a problem that befuddled. Really, she's not that big a dog.
And then we realized... as the snow started to slowly melt, the poop we were picking up was last year's deposit. We were in a race. The dog, the doo-doo, the melt. Three weekends ago we took two shovels and we spent two days uncovering landmines. We filled more than a dozen garbage bags. Truthfully poos are dangerous, bacteria-infested, logs of lethal e-coli. One Oh-Henry shaped bar would be enough to close the pool down for the summer or cause a $300 dump of water in the spring. Neither alternative was particularly attractive. We took the last of the poo off the still-almost- I-guess-it's-not dangerous mushy ice, and the next day the ice cracked.
Root Beer isn't allowed in the backyard any more.It's dangerous for her and potentially expensive for us. Her dog run is beside the house, not near water or ice, and yet the Hefty bags are still out every morning, scouting for errant waste, but it's almost all behind us now.

I kiss you on eye

Root Beer just licked Bel on the eye. Stuff like that has been happening a lot lately. Sometimes, when my glance scrapes the corner of the room, I catch Bel and Charli curled up together, purring.
Christmas has been a lot like that, too. A lot of purring.
Silent contentment. A time of peace.
Back to work tomorrow.

Sitting on a landmine

Black-eyed Lighting (Bel) is a hurricane, a tempest, a storm of maximum cat-pacity, but she is outshadowed by a little hellion of fur, she's outshadowed by Charli.
Our little adopt-a-cat was only supposed to visit. With her tiny pink tongue, yellow eyes and grey streaked tabby coat, little miss innocent stole our hearts. We told our son Josh to leave her at our house for just a little while. She stayed overnight. We adored her. She jumped at our feet when we rolled over in our sleep. She purred in our faces as she snuggled deep into the comforter wrapped around our bodies. She stayed for another day, and night.
We bought her a litter box. It didn't seem fair that she should use Bel's. It wasn't dignifed. Besides, Bel's litter box was high on a shelf in the basement, put far away from a hungry puppy now indifferent to the tasty treats hidden in the sand.
She went home and we cried. We missed her. She was the echo and the reverbation of Bel's former playfulness. The stately queen made way for the princess, and the princess became pampered.
Litter boxes changed to squeeky mice and fluffy puffballs that skittered across the kitchen floor.
And little puss, Charli stayed. Her playfulness welcome and her purrs appreciated.
Now big puss patiently watches little cat, but it is an eerie calm that promises to explode the very next time Bel's little box of sand is claimed as kitten territory.

Big biceps and strong forelegs

It wasn't the eerie howl emitting from who I can only assume were deranged teenagers chasing me that had me running. It was the pull of a leash from a black bolt of pure labradoodle lighting.
The pack behind me howled louder as I yanked my arm back into the socket. "Come on, Rootbeer, stop!" My assertive command sounded weak and nowhere near the calm, assertive statement Ceaser Milan told me to make. Rootbeer turned momentarily and gave me her goofiest grin. I let the leash out a little further and ran to catch up, easily outdistancing the pack behind us.
After a while, I yanked the leash back. My bicep contracted and relaxed. Rootbeer's forelegs bulged and the tendons in her neck stood straight out. My muscles outdistanced her flex today. I won the race

Tripping on tuna

I tripped on the tin can by the door, something was fishy, but I ignored it. After all, I trip on a lot of things by the front door. After I tossed my work clothes on my bed and shrugged into a pair of shorts, I stumbled over another tin. Still, I didn't get it. The kitchen called so I wandered in and grabbed some salad. I grabbed a tin from the pantry and opened it. Nothing like some yummy tuna.
And then I heard it.
"Kathy."
Dave was downstairs bellowing and I was tagged with go see what's bothering him duty.
I went downstairs and headed towards the back door. I nearly fell on my face. Littered all through the sunroom were 17 tins of cat food. They were chewed on but still intact. I retraced my steps. Back to the bedroom where, on my bed, yep, my bed, were three more cans. In the blanket next to the bed, in the nest created by the nocturnal circular motions of the big black puppy, were a couple more cans. Downstairs - again. The can by the front door- cat food.
The dog had hunted down the groceries and had grabbed a bag full of tinned meat. She had dragged the bag through the house. She had spent time trying to chew through the metal but didn't succeed.
After all of that effort, Root Beer was denied the kitty chow and had to wait for puppy love. I couldn't help it. After all of that work, I had to give her a bite of tuna.